The Duffel Shuffle Podcast

*Editor's note: This episode was recorded on September 18, before an avalanche at Camp 3 on Manaslu killed two climbers. Our thoughts are with their families, their friends, and everyone involved in the rescue.*

In Episode 64, Sam and Adrian open with quick hits on The Gear Project, a new online consignment shop for used outdoor gear, and a wave of climbing and ski films landing on major streamers this fall, before turning to the autumn Himalaya season. 

Adrian opens the episode with why post-monsoon snowpack and long stable weather windows make fall the best time for technical and ski objectives below 8,000 meters, and why an unreliable jet stream makes the highest peaks a gamble.

• Manaslu: With Cho Oyu closed and Pakistan seeing a quiet summer, more than 1,000 climbers have converged on Manaslu for a record season. Adrian, who spent four seasons there after Russell Brice first brought commercial teams in 2008, breaks down the mountain's history of massive avalanches, the wet tail of this year's monsoon, and a slide above Camp 3 that wiped out an estimated 1,300 meters of fixed rope just hours after the fixing team came down.
• The rest of the map: Dhaulagiri's low commercial success rate (and Adrian's canceled expedition there as a young climber), autumn attempts on Makalu and Annapurna, and the case for a commercial fall season on Everest's south side, where shared infrastructure could make the Khumbu Icefall affordable.
• Ama Dablam: Adrian's favorite mountain, which he has summited 13 times, and the hanging serac hazard that shapes Alpenglow's camp policy there.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit https://alpenglowexpeditions.com/ or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

Episode 63 opens with Adrian and Sam's conversation on the devastating Nepal-China border flood at Gyirong Port, and a nod to Laura Rogora's blazing six-day ascent of Bibliographie, before settling into a wide-ranging interview with viral Minecraft-YouTuber-turned-mountaineer Ryan Mitchell.

Ryan built a following of millions making Minecraft videos before walking away to chase Mount Everest — a goal he set purely because he thought it would make a good video title. 

• With no outdoor background and guidance from Everest expert Alan Arnette, he trained for a year and a half and summited in 2024. 
• He quickly found himself hooked and a brutal, storm-battered K2 season in 2025 left him hungry to go bigger.
• This spring he set out to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen, but a botched tonsil infection and a rushed return to altitude triggered HAPE at base camp, ending the attempt and sparking a season-long debate over what counts as a "legitimate" no-oxygen ascent. 
• Ryan talks candidly about getting rescued, tuning out online criticism, and the hard lesson that ego, not fitness, is usually what gets climbers killed.

He's already looking ahead: Ryan is currently attempting Manaslu, aiming for another no-oxygen summit with a snowboard descent, and lays out a longer-term goal of climbing all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit https://alpenglowexpeditions.com/ or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

Episode 62 opens with quick hits on T-Mobile's satellite phone service and a run of Alps headlines — climbers requesting paid rescue after ignoring a Mont Blanc closure, a family of 36 rescued in the Austrian high country, and Kilian Jornet's viral post on the range's fast-changing climate — before Sam and Adrian sit down with Cody Townsend and Tommy Caldwell to talk through their spring traverse of Norman's 13.

Norman's 13 links the Sierra's thirteen 14,000-foot peaks from Mt. Langley to North Palisade, a route of over 100 miles and 40,000 vertical feet that had never been done in winter. 

• Townsend, a self-described "5.9 climber and 5.14 skier," recruited Caldwell — the inverse — after cold-emailing him with the idea; a day of simul-climbing at Lover's Leap and some recon skiing on Mt. Sill convinced them their risk tolerances matched well enough to commit. 
• Traveling south to north over eight days with cameraman Bjarne Salén, they broke the route into three distinct stretches: a technical run through the Whitney-area peaks, a 50-mile bushwhack and river-forge through John Muir Trail sequoia groves, and a final rope-and-crampons push across the notoriously exposed Palisades Traverse.
• The trip nearly broke both of them. Townsend fought a lung infection and food poisoning through the early days, and a 25-hour closing push through isothermic snow — on a catastrophically failed ski boot — tested everyone's limits. 
• The two talk candidly about reading the line between suffering and real danger, the odd role reversal of a rock climber staying calm on exposed skiing while a skier plunge-steps nervously on rock, and how the trip changed the way Townsend plans traverses going forward. 
• A film on the expedition, shot largely on iPhone after their camera batteries mysteriously died, is due out this fall.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit https://alpenglowexpeditions.com/ or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

Episode 61 opens with a somber update on the Broad Peak avalanche in Pakistan that killed all ten climbers, including members of Nims Purja's team, on their July 30th summit push.

Following the update, Sam and Adrian dig into the episode's real focus: rope fixing, the process that makes the world's biggest mountains climbable.

• Adrian breaks down the difference between alpine style — climbing a mountain in one unsupported push — and siege style, where teams fix rope from camp to camp so climbers can self-belay on the way up and move quickly on the way down. The practice exploded in scale after the 1996 Everest tragedy, when climbers caught in a whiteout couldn't find their way back to tents just yards away; today, nearly the entire route on Everest, and increasingly all 14 eight-thousanders, is strung with fixed line.
• He traces how the work gets organized — from the old days of rival companies pooling gear and Sherpa labor, or tossing cash into a pot at Base Camp, to today's more formal systems: China's government-run team on Everest's north side, Nepal's Expedition Operators Association contracting the job out to local companies, and this season's milestone in Pakistan, where an all-Pakistani crew led by Mirzer Ali fixed a new line up Broad Peak's headwall — the first time a major Karakoram peak has been rope-fixed entirely by Pakistani high-altitude workers.
• Adrian shares his own path into the work, from tunneling through a collapsing cornice on Ama Dablam in the early 2000s to a 2010 rope-fixing day on Everest so calm and untracked he calls it the highlight of his life. He's candid about the risks too: anchors that melt or rip out, old abandoned ropes that fail under body weight, and the 2010 K2 tragedy that killed nine climbers after a serac collapse wiped out the fixed line and left survivors without the gear or skills to downclimb. 

His takeaway: fixed lines are an extraordinary safety tool, but never one to fully rely on without a backup plan.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit https://alpenglowexpeditions.com/ or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

More than two years and sixty straight episodes for the Duffel Shuffle! Adrian calls in from a Nicaragua surf trip, and before getting into it, he and Sam touch on a rough week of accidents on classic trade routes (Mont Blanc, Huascarán, Rainier) and the FAA's new approval of drones for avalanche mitigation.

The real focus of the episode is a full roadmap for getting into climbing and mountaineering — for total beginners and for rock climbers eyeing high-altitude objectives alike. Adrian traces his own path in from age 12 on local Massachusetts crags through a college outdoor program that eventually got him to Ecuador at 17, and makes the case that adults break into the sport just as often as kids do.

• Sam and Adrian lay out where to actually build the skills: climbing gyms, guide companies, and clubs for the technical basics (ropes, knots, belaying, crampon work); 
• via ferrata's and plain time on trails for the underrated skill of moving efficiently on uneven, exposed terrain; and a progression from guided client to genuine climbing partner, built through repeat trips with the same guide or company. 
• And risk — how hazard and consequence combine, why mismatched risk tolerance between partners causes the most friction in the mountains, and why so much of a guide's training is really about risk management rather than technical skill.

Parting advice: don't overthink the big goal, find your first one, and give it a few real tries before deciding it's not for you.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

Sam and Adrian open episode 59 with three news stories — a bolting controversy resolved (kind of?) on Snake Dike, the public comment window on the PARC Act's draft management plans, and freeride skiing's addition to the 2030 Olympics — before shifting into a full rundown of the Pakistan 8,000-meter season, now underway.

Following spring season in the Himalaya, climbers and skiers move on to the Karakoram range, with the season often starting in June and peaking in July before temps warm too much into August. 

• Why Pakistan Climbs in Summer Nepal and Tibet's Himalayan season runs spring and fall because their more southern latitude brings a powerful summer monsoon that makes climbing impossible — and increasingly, makes even the shoulder seasons too warm for features like the Khumbu Icefall to hold together. Pakistan's Karakoram sits further north and west, giving it a weather pattern closer to Europe or North America, with a summer window instead. That window is compressing too: teams are now pushing to finish by mid-July rather than mid-August as glaciers destabilize earlier each year.
• Nanga Parbat: A Season Already Winding Down — Except One Face Of Pakistan's five 8,000-meter peaks, Nanga Parbat climbs earliest, partly because it sits further south and is technically part of the Himalayan range rather than the Karakoram. The normal Diamir Face route is already falling out of condition. Meanwhile, a team is still attempting a new route on the Rupal Face — the mountain's massive alpine wall, home to some of the biggest lines in the world — in a pure alpine style (no camps, no fixed ropes, no pre-carrying gear).
• A Quieter Pakistan Season: War and Infrastructure This year's season is noticeably smaller. Sam and Adrian point to the ongoing conflict along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, which escalated sharply in February and forced expedition companies — including Alpenglow, along with Furtenbach Adventures and Madison Mountaineering — to sit the season out on safety and logistics grounds, while some Nepali operators chose to run smaller trips anyway. Beyond the war, Adrian frames Pakistan as roughly 20 years behind Nepal on tourism infrastructure: more avalanche exposure on routes like Broad Peak, and far less-developed logistics, hygiene, and food quality at base camp. He argues that gap will close, and that the Baltoro trek and Pakistan's climbing and skiing terrain — bigger, steeper, and less crowded than Nepal's — are worth experiencing before it does.
• Andrzej Bargiel's Continuous Ski Descent of Nanga Parbat Andrzej Bargiel completed the first continuous ski descent of Nanga Parbat, skiing from summit to snowline without a break — distinct from the mountain's first-ever ski descent (Hans Kammerlander, 1990s) and last year's Rupal Face descent, both of which included overnight stops partway down. Bargiel used drone-guided route-finding to link a new line through the Diamir Face's serac zones, avoiding a rocky section that has forced other skiers to remove their skis. The descent makes Nanga Parbat his eighth of fourteen 8,000-meter peaks skied without supplemental oxygen, putting him on pace toward being the first to ski all fourteen in that style.
• Remembering Guillaume "Gee" Pierrel A brief check-in following the loss of ski mountaineer Gee Pierrel on K6 a couple episodes back — his teammates are down safely, though no further details on the incident have been released.
• More From the Karakoram Playground A team of Italian climbers put up a new 30-plus-pitch mixed route on K7 without summiting, which Sam and Adrian frame as a legitimate new-route achievement independent of a summit push. More broadly, they note this year's smaller, less commercial Pakistan season is producing an outsized share of no-oxygen and new-route climbing — with K2's fixed ropes up to Camp 2, and Broad Peak and the Gasherbrums positioning for summit pushes as climbers stack peaks ahead of K2's mid-to-late July window.

Follow along on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast and visit www.duffelshufflepodcast.com to join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram.

Episode 58 brings the Duffel Shuffle audience back to the top story from the 2025 Everest Season. While both Sam and Adrian have been skeptical of the use of Xenon Gas that made headlines last season, the two sit down with Garth Miller, a UK-based airline captain and former British Army officer. 

In 2025, Garth was part of a four-person team that pulled off a London-to-London ascent of Everest in just 6.5 days, attributing their success and safety margin to the use of Xenon Gas. The conversation opened Sam and Adrian's own thinking on the substance and hearing the details behind their adventure connected some dots that had been left out in most of the media coverage surrounding their climb. 

• Garth first attempted Everest in 2004, turning back near the Second Step after a failed oxygen system caused repeated panic attacks. He returned in 2022, summiting Everest and Lhotse in a 21-day push
• In 2025 he joined a Furtenbach Adventures expedition with three other former British special forces members, training with 550–650 hours of pre-acclimatization before a single 25-minute Xenon exposure in Germany two weeks out
• The team framed Xenon as a safety tool for its neuroprotective and cardiopulmonary properties, not a performance enhancer, and pushes back on media narratives conflating it with doping
• Garth points out that other altitude aids already in common use — Diamox, dexamethasone — are also WADA-banned substances, complicating the "cheating" framing Xenon received
• They summited together after weathering a serious storm below the South Summit that sent much of their Sherpa team back down, and were caught in a Khumbu Icefall avalanche on the way up
• Garth sees client experience-vetting, not crowding, as the bigger lever for Everest safety, and notes the team raised over $500,000 for veterans' charities including Scotty's Little Soldiers

Follow us on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast and visit www.duffelshufflepodcast.com to join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram.

On episode 57, Sam and Adrian dig into two stories making waves in their respective corners of the outdoor world before launching into an unplanned fifth installment of Everest season coverage and a full listener mailbag.

Sam kicks things off with a story from his own week on Mount Shasta, where he watched runner Sarah Burke blow past his group near the summit and set a new women's unsupported FKT — Horse Camp to summit in 2 hours and 10 seconds, breaking the previous mark of roughly 2:13. The moment sends him down a rabbit hole into Shasta's surprisingly deep speed-record history, from John Muir's 4:10 ascent in 1874 to Norman Clyde's 2:43 in 1923, and into a broader conversation with Adrian about what "unsupported" really means when guided teams and other climbers are nearby to help if something goes wrong. 

Adrian brings his own story from Yosemite, where guidebook author Eric Sloan has added roughly 16 new bolts to the first three pitches of the famous Snake Dike route on Half Dome, shrinking runouts that once stretched 50 to 100 feet down to just 10 or 12. The move has reignited a long-simmering debate over who gets to decide how safe a historic climb should be, and both hosts land on the same conclusion: it's a conversation best settled locally, by the climbing community itself, rather than dictated from the top down.

From there, the two pivot into a story too big to leave out of the season: a fifth, unplanned Everest episode.

• Hillary Dawa's Six-Day Survival on Everest — A Sherpa originally hired as a Camp Two cook for the small operator Himalayan Traverse Adventure was put on a summit push he wasn't trained or equipped for. On the descent, with the team low on oxygen and one client struggling badly, Dawa was left seated near the Yellow Band while the rest of the group continued down — and no apparent search effort followed. He spent six days descending alone, fell into a crevasse near 18,000 feet and broke his femur, survived two days trapped before an avalanche gave him a way out, and was eventually spotted crawling through the bottom of the icefall by a trash-cleanup crew before being helicoptered to safety.
• What Went Wrong — and What Needs to Change — Sam and Adrian walk through the chain of decisions that led to the accident, from the irresponsibility of putting an undertrained worker on a summit push to the company's failure to search once he went missing. They push for changes that outlast this season's headlines: minimum experience standards at every level of a team, an independent rescue presence on the mountain, and government oversight enforcing basic rules at every camp.
• Listener Mailbag: Suffering, Decision-Making, and the Case for a Mountain Guide — Tying directly back to the Dawa story, Adrian breaks down how to tell productive suffering from real danger at altitude, using headache severity as a rough gauge. Both hosts agree that knowing where that gray-area line sits is exactly the judgment call a certified, IFMGA/AMGA-trained mountain guide is built to make — and what was missing on Dawa's team.
• Listener Mailbag: Quick Hits — Rounding out the episode: theft at high-altitude camps (rare for passports and valuables, more common as opportunistic gear grabs), training mental toughness through repeated exposure to difficulty and failure, Adrian's picks for a favorite 8,000-meter peak beyond Everest (Cho Oyu for safety and beauty, Makalu for those chasing something wilder), techniques for safely passing on crowded fixed lines, preventing snow blindness through consistent eye protection, and a candid rundown of how mountaineers manage GI distress at altitude.

With Everest properly wrapped, Sam and Adrian are turning toward guest episodes and the approaching Karakoram season, with K2 and the rest of Pakistan's big peaks on deck.

Follow us on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast and visit www.duffelshufflepodcast.com to join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram.

With the 2026 Everest season now officially in the books, Sam and Adrian are back for their fourth and final installment of Everest coverage, with Adrian calling in from Denver where the season's biggest stories have been the talk of the festival floor.

Before diving into Everest, Sam and Adrian each share a news story from the week. Adrian touches on the trending trademark lawsuit between outdoor apparel giant Patagonia and Pattie Gonia, the drag persona of environmental activist and outdoor influencer Wyn Wiley, unpacking the nuance on both sides and why two brands with nearly identical values find themselves here. Sam flags two recent search and rescue incidents in the South Lake Tahoe area, which leads to a spirited debate on satellite communicators vs. iPhone satellite messaging — both landing on the same conclusion: redundancy wins.

From there, Sam and Adrian cover the following from the 2026 Everest season:

- Bartek Ziemski: Story of the Season: No contest for Adrian. The Polish ski mountaineer — a software engineer with no social media — skied Lhotse without oxygen, rested briefly, then summited and skied Everest without oxygen as well, keeping his skis on from top to bottom. Adrian reflects on what it takes physically and mentally to turn around for a second no-oxygen 8,000-meter peak in a single season, and what Bartek's ascents mean for the next generation of Himalayan ski mountaineering.

- The Season by the Numbers: A record number of climbers, a record single-day summit of 274 people, roughly five fatalities — and what may be the best no-oxygen season on record with four successful ascents including Bartek, Kristen Harila, and Nirmal Purja. Garrett Madison notched his 16th summit, Kenton Cool his 21st, and Kami Rita Sherpa extended his record to 32.

- Aviation: The Season's Most Complicated Story: Drones moving thousands of kilograms of equipment over the Khumbu Icefall represent real progress toward reducing worker trips through the mountain's most dangerous section. But widespread abuse of the helicopter rescue system — with climbers faking medical emergencies to skip the descent — is a growing problem, and Adrian argues the current regulatory framework is failing.

- Three Climbers Stranded Above the Icefall: As of recording, two Americans and a Sherpa remain at Camp 2 after the icefall was decommissioned, waiting on a helicopter that weather has so far prevented from reaching them. Adrian weighs in on the decision-making that put them there — and what it says about following the rules of the mountain you're on.

- The FKT Question — Karl Egloff and Tyler Andrews: Karl turned around below Camp 4, staying true to his no-oxygen-only philosophy. Tyler eventually summited with oxygen in just under 10 hours. Adrian congratulates Tyler on seeing the full mountain but is direct: oxygen FKTs and no-oxygen FKTs are not the same record, and keeping that distinction clear matters for the athletes still chasing the real one.

One more episode is coming. Send your Everest questions via DM, YouTube comments, or the website — Sam and Adrian are planning a bonus listener Q&A before moving on to K2 season.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

With the 2026 Everest season hitting its most critical stretch, Sam and Adrian are back for their third installment of armchair mountaineering coverage. 

Before diving into Everest, Adrian recommends HBO's four-part series The Dark Wizard on the life of Dean Potter, which has now released all episodes and has been making the rounds well beyond the climbing community. Adrian reflects on  his feeling genuinely moved by how elegantly the filmmakers handled the full arc of Dean's life, his struggles, and ultimately his death. Sam touches on a new GPS-based avalanche transceiver from German company Nivia Safety, claiming to speed up burial searches by up to 30% and set to launch in fall 2026.

From there, Sam and Adrian cover the following from the 2026 Everest season:

• Bartek Ziemski on Lhotse: The Polish ski mountaineer made only the second ski descent of the Lhotse Couloir — the first without oxygen, without new fixed ropes above Camp 3, and without ever taking his skis off, including finding a creative line through the icefall. Adrian, who made the first ski descent of Makalu and has a personal connection to Bartek, calls it one of the most groundbreaking Himalayan ski mountaineering achievements he's seen. Since recording this episode, Bartek went on to successfully summit and ski Everest without oxygen as well. 
• The First Summit Wave: The rope fixing team reached the summit and six clients followed before the weather window closed. Adrian celebrates the fixing effort while pushing back on the practice of clients climbing on rope fixing day — a habit that adds pressure to the team doing the most dangerous work on the mountain.
• Summit Windows and Crowd Management: With a record number of climbers on the south side and a compressed season, Adrian breaks down what the next 10 days look like, how teams are positioning themselves across two potential windows, and why he's always preferred a marginal weather day with fewer people over a perfect day with 150 climbers on the route.
• Speed Ascents, Kristen Harila, and No-Oxygen Attempts: A look at the notable storylines shaping up for the final push — including Tyler Andrews and Karl Egloff's contrasting acclimatization approaches ahead of their FKT attempts, and Kristen Harila's no-oxygen bid after summiting Nuptse without supplemental oxygen as a warmup.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list. The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.